Prescription drug deaths: Prescription pain killers, sleeping pills killing Aussies
LEGAL prescription meds are killing more Aussies than drugs bought from criminal dealers, with experts demanding the federal government do more to stop the ‘silent killer’.
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THE drugs Australians get legally on prescription from their GP are killing more people than those bought illegally from criminal drug dealers, a shocking new report shows.
A hidden epidemic of deaths from prescription pain killers and sleeping pills has been exposed in a report that shows drug overdoses now kill twice as many people as car accidents.
The alarming report from the Pennington Institute also shows it’s Australians aged between 30 and 59, not young adults, who are most likely to suffer a drug overdose death.
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This middle aged group accounts for seven in ten drug overdose deaths.
And the rates of overdose deaths are disturbingly higher per head of population in regional areas compared to the city.
In 2016 there were 2177 drug related deaths — the highest number in 20 years.
The report shows deaths involving amphetamines (including ice) have grown considerably in the past five years killing 1237 people in the period 2012 to 2016 compared to the 298 deaths for the period 2002 to 2006.
Heroin deaths also increased from 554 in 2002-2006 to 1183 in 2012-2016.
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This is bad news but it is actually far lower than the number of Australians being killed by prescription pills.
The number of deaths involving benzodiazepines, a sleeping pill and anxiety medication, has doubled in the last decade, the report shows.
The number of Australians who died from overdoses involving these drugs jumped from 812 (2002-2006) to 2177 (2012-2016).
Prescription opioids including oxycodone, codeine, morphine, fentanyl, pethidine and tramadol are also huge killers.
There was a massive 87 per cent increase in prescription opioid deaths from 2008 to 2014 partly driven by a surge in prescriptions for these drugs which jumped dramatically from 10 million a year in 2009 to 14 million a year today.
These prescription opioids account for 70 per cent of opioid related deaths and about 45 per cent of all accidental drug related deaths. They killed 2810 people between 2012-2016.
The new report — “Australia’s Annual Overdose Report 2018” — warns Australia is sleepwalking towards a United States style drug overdose crisis.
The Pennington Institute’s John Ryan said they have become a silent killer and the deadliness of benzodiazepines is clearly being grossly underestimated.
Mr Ryan said overdoses usually happen accidentally with most of the deaths caused by multiple contributing drugs rather than a single drug.
“People frequently use these drugs during a time of peak stress to get to sleep or they may use them on a long-distance flight,” he said.
“Commonly used drugs like Temazepam used to help people sleep and Valium used for anxiety and sleep are involved in far too many accidental drug overdoses,” he said.
He said rising deaths from the drug fentanyl are enormous cause for alarm.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, 100 times more powerful than pure morphine and it is a key and growing part of Australia’s overdose crisis.
The number of accidental deaths involving fentanyl, pethidine and tramadol jumped ninefold from 2002 to 2016.
The government moved earlier this year to make codeine containing drugs prescription only in a bid to combat rising numbers of opioid deaths.
Mr Ryan said the Federal Government should go further and carefully review the prescribing rules for of the pain killer fentanyl which have sky rocketed since GPs started prescribing it.
He said the government should also increase spending on drug treatment across Australia by 400 per cent because only 1 in 4 people in need currently get access to treatment.
The focus should shift from law enforcement to drug use as a health issue because most overdoses are pharmaceutical, he said, but most of the money goes on combating the supply of illegal drugs.
Mr Ryan said: “Spending priorities are wrong in Australia. 65 per cent of government investment tackling illicit drugs is spent on law enforcement to reduce supply. Just 22 per cent is spent on treatment. 9.5 per cent on prevention and 2.2 per cent on harm reduction.”
